Business of the House
Debate between Rosie Winterton and Maria Caulfield(4 days, 22 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to you for allowing me to raise a point of order from the Front Bench. It relates to comments that the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), made at the start of business questions. She did notify me that she was going to make those comments, but after business questions had started. However, this point of order is more about the content of the comments, which I personally found very difficult.
I did write to my constituents over a year ago about a consultation that is being run by my local council on 15 to 20-minute communities. In that letter, I pointed to some of the rumours about 15-minute cities, because that is something that constituents have raised with me. That consultation is still live on the council’s website—it is on page 45 of its planning and appraisals document—so this is very much a constituency-based issue.
However, I find it very difficult to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist on the back of that, especially as the vaccines Minister. Whenever there is a debate in this place on that subject, the number of death threats and the amount of abuse that I get is overwhelming at times. I realise that colleagues sometimes have valid points to raise, but there is a backlash whenever those debates are held.
More importantly, being linked to antisemitism when my family in London are actually Jewish, and have had a very difficult time over the past few months, was devastating. I kindly ask the shadow Leader of the House to either withdraw those statements, or just to reflect that while we all play politics in this space, sometimes things are very personal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Does the shadow Leader of the House wish to make a further point of order?
Business of the House
Debate between Rosie Winterton and Maria Caulfield(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
On page 31 of the Conservative party manifesto, the Government pledge to protect greenfield sites and prioritise brownfield sites for development, yet in practice planning inspectors are overturning local democratic planning authorities’ decisions to refuse building on greenfield sites—most recently at South Road in Wivelsfield in my constituency, while Nolands Farm in Plumpton and Mornings Mill in Polegate are facing a similar fate. Can we have a debate in Government time about the Government’s commitment to their pledge in the manifesto, the promise made by the Prime Minister to the Father of the House recently, and the role of planning inspectors in overturning these democratic decisions?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Before I call the Leader of the House, let me say that I want to get everybody in, so it is quite important that questions are brief.